Operating-system-level virtualization containers can be useful for processing data in a manner that protects or isolates the data from external influences. Nevertheless, a conventional virtualization container may only permit one-to-one mappings with a local directory or file that is external to the virtualization container.
Additionally, when running a conventional virtualization container within a cluster or scaling environment (such as DOCKER SWARM or KUBERNETES), challenges may arise in the process of providing storage to these containers, because a particular container may run on any of the nodes within the cluster. This cluster configuration can introduce complications when mapping storage locations to varying nodes of the cluster where virtualization containers are configured. Users may attempt to address these challenges by using object stores, network file system mounts, or distributed file systems. Nevertheless, these conventional solutions may still face the challenge of selecting, combining, and securing multiple sources of data, as discussed further below. For example, a user may find it inconvenient, or inefficient, to access data from multiple distinct external sources within a conventional virtualization container. The instant disclosure, therefore, identifies and addresses a need for systems and methods for performing storage location virtualization.